LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Angela Merkel served Germany as chancellor for 16 years. Along the way, she worked with four U.S. presidents - George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Merkel stepped down three years ago. Now she's out with "Freedom," a memoir about her childhood, her early political career and her tenure as chancellor. She sat down with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly to talk about the book and some of those American presidents she got to know. Here's an excerpt.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MARY LOUISE KELLY: You also write about Donald Trump, about meeting him at the White House after he was elected president - this was 2017 - and that you flew home from that meeting feeling uneasy. Why?
ANGELA MERKEL: (Through interpreter) Donald Trump, as president, was a person who very strongly supported his ideas. That's natural. That's what every president of the United States of America does, as every chancellor does that. But Donald Trump, less than others, believes in the capability or the quality of a compromise. He wants to be the sole winner in any type of conflict, and he does not believe in any win-win situation where both sides benefit from a solution. And that makes the collaboration more difficult and different than with other heads of government.
KELLY: He called into question NATO as a collaborative security alliance. As you know, many people are wondering whether this moment, his reelection, signals the end of the post-World War II era of American leadership in the world. Does it?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: You can hear Chancellor Merkel's answer to that question and the rest of her conversation with Mary Louise Kelly later today on All Things Considered. And since we have you and the host chair from Berlin today, Rob, we should take advantage of your knowledge. You covered Merkel as chancellor. How is her...
ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Yeah.
FADEL: ...Time in office remembered?
SCHMITZ: Well, I think among Germans, it's pretty mixed. On one hand, she's a beloved chancellor. The first woman to hold that office. She did that for 16 years. That's no small feat...
FADEL: Right.
SCHMITZ: ...In Germany. And at the same time, on the other hand, while she was chancellor, she strengthened economic reliance on Russia, something that later backfired after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. And I think another part of her legacy that is mixed is immigration. She allowed more than 1 million migrants come to Germany at a time when someone needed to be refuge for these folks, and some people think it destabilized the country later on and led to the rise of the far right.
FADEL: Yeah. Sounds like there is a lot to discuss, so I'm looking forward to the rest of that conversation...
SCHMITZ: Me too.
FADEL: ...From Mary Louise Kelly. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
